The Old Gray Homestead

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CHAPTER V

Sylvia's sprain, as Austin had suspected, proved much more serious than
she had admitted, but when the village doctor came about noon to dress
her ankle, she insisted that she was none the worse for her long
exposure, and that if she must lie still on a lounge for two weeks, the
least the family could do would be to humor her in everything, and spend
as much time as possible with her, or she would certainly die of
boredom. She passed the entire day in making and unfolding plans,
looking up the sailing dates of steamships, and writing letters of
introduction for Austin. By night she had the satisfaction of knowing
that Weston's offer for the south meadow had been accepted, that the
Wallacetown Bank and the insurance money would furnish part of the
needed funds, and that she was to be allowed to loan the rest, and that
the little brick cottage belonged to her. The fact that Austin had had a
long talk with his father and brother, and that his passage for Holland
had been engaged by telegraph, seemed scarcely less of an achievement to
her; but Mrs. Gray noticed, as she kissed her little benefactress after
seeing her comfortably settled for the night, that her usually pale
cheeks were very red and her eyes unnaturally bright, and worried over
her all night long.

The next morning there could be no doubt of the fact that Sylvia was
really ill, and two days later Dr. Wells shook his head with
dissatisfaction after using his thermometer and stethoscope. He was a
conscientious man who lacked self-confidence, and the look of things was
disquieting to him.

"I think you ought to get a nurse," he said in the hall to Mrs. Gray as
he went out, "and probably she would like to have her own doctor from the
city in consultation, and some member of her family come to her. It looks
to me very much as if we were in for bronchial pneumonia, and she's a
delicate little thing at best."

Sylvia was laughing when Mrs. Gray, bent on being both firm and tactful,
reentered her room. "Tell Dr. Wells he must make his stage-whispers
softer if he doesn't want me to overhear him," she said, "and don't think
of ordering the funeral flowers just yet. I'm not delicate--I'm strong as
an ox--if I weren't I shouldn't be alive at all. Get a nurse by all means
if it will make things easier for you--that's the only reason I need one.
They're usually more bother than they're worth, but I know of two or
three who might do fairly well, if any one of them is free. My doctor is
an old fogey, and I won't have him around. As for family, I'm not as
greatly blessed--numerically or otherwise--in that respect as the Grays,
but my Uncle Mat would love to come, I feel sure, as he's rather hurt at
my runaway conduct." She gave the necessary addresses, and still
persisting that they were making a great fuss about nothing, turned over
on her pillow in a violent fit of coughing.

Sylvia was right in one thing: she was much stronger than Dr. Wells
guessed, and though the next week proved an anxious one for every member
of the household except herself, it was not a dismal one. Even if she
were flat on her back, her spirit and her vitality remained contagious.
Thomas, whose state of mind was by this time quite apparent to the
family, though he imagined it to be a well-concealed secret, hung about
outside her door, positive that she was going to die, and brought
offerings in the shape of flowers, early apples, and pet animals which he
thought might distract her. Austin, who shared his room, insisted that he
could not sleep because Thomas groaned and sighed so all night; Molly
pertly asked him why he did not try rabbits, as kittens did not seem to
appeal to Sylvia, and his mother bantered him half-seriously for thinking
of "any one so far above him" whose heart, moreover, was buried "in the
grave." Austin's somewhat expurgated version of Sylvia's story put an end
to the latter part of the protest, but sent his hearers into a new
ferment of excitement and sympathy. Sally, who was all ready to start
for a "ball" in Wallacetown with Fred when she heard it, declared she
couldn't go one step, it made her feel "that low in her spirits," and
Fred replied, by gosh, he didn't blame her one mite; whereat they
wandered off and spent the evening at a very comfortable distance from
the house, but fairly close together, revelling in a wealth of gruesome
facts and suppositions. Katherine said she certainly never would marry at
all, men were such dreadful creatures, and Molly said, yes, indeed, but
what else _could_ a girl marry?--while Edith determined to devote the
rest of _her_ life to attending and adoring the lovely, sad, drooping
widow, whose existence was to be one long poem of beautiful seclusion;
and she was so pleased with her own ideas, and her manner of expressing
them, that she wept scalding tears into the broth she was making for
Sylvia as she stirred it over the stove.

The presence of "Uncle Mat," greatly dreaded beforehand, proved an
unexpected source of solace and delight. He was a quiet, shrewd little
man, not unlike Sylvia in many ways, but with a merry twinkle in his eye,
and a brisk manner of speech which she did not possess. He sized up the
Gray family quickly, and apparently with satisfaction, for he talked
quite freely of his niece to them, and they saw that they were not alone
in their estimate of her.

"It certainly was a great stroke of luck all round--for her as well as
for you--when she blew in here," he said, "but if you knew what an
awful hole we think she's left behind her in New York you'd think
yourselves doubly lucky to have her all to yourselves. There's more
than one young man, I can tell you"--with a sly look at
Thomas--"watching out for her return. You should have seen her at a
party I gave for her three years ago or more, dressed in a pink frock
looped up with roses, and with cheeks to match! She wasn't always this
pale little shadow, I can tell you. Well, the boys were around her that
night like bees round a honeysuckle bush--no denying there's something
almighty irresistible about these little, soft-looking girls, now, is
there? Ah! her roses didn't last long, poor child. Now you've given her
a good, healthful place to live in, and something to think about and
do--she'd have lost her reason without them, after all she's been
through. But when you're tired of her, I want her. I'm a poor, forlorn
lonely old bachelor, and I need her a great deal more than any of you.
What do you say to a little walk, Mr. Gray, before we turn in? I want
to have a look at your fine farm. I have a farm myself--no such grand
old place as this, of course, but a neat little toy not far from the
city, where I can run down Sundays. Sylvia used to be very fond of
going down with me. It's from my foreman, a queer, scientific
chap--Jenkins his name is--that she's picked up all these notions
she's been unloading on you. Pretty good, most of them, aren't they,
though? You must run down there some time, boys, and look things
over--it's well to go about a bit when one's thinking of building and
branching out--Sylvia's idea, exactly, isn't it?"

Mr. Gray and Thomas did "run down," seizing the opportunity while Austin
was still at home, and while there was practically no farm-work to be
done. Jenkins did the honors of Mr. Stevens's little place handsomely,
and they returned with magnificent plans, from the erection of silos and
the laying of concrete floors to the proper feeding of poultry. When
"Uncle Mat" was obliged to return to his business, after staying over two
weeks with the Grays, Austin went with him, for he suggested that he
would be glad to have the boy as his guest in New York for a few days
before he sailed.

"You better have a glimpse of the 'neat little toy,' too," he said,
"and perhaps see something of a rather neat little city, too! You'll
want to do a little shopping and so on, and I might be of assistance in
that way."

"I don't see how you can go," said Thomas to Austin the night before he
left, as they were undressing, "while Sylvia is still in bed, and won't
be around for another week at least. She's responsible for all your
tremendous good fortune, and you'll leave without even saying thank you
and good-bye. You're a darned queer ungrateful cuss, and always were."

"I know it," said Austin, "and such being the 'nature of the beast,'
don't bother trying to make me over. You can be grateful and devoted
enough for both of us. Now, do shut up and let me go to sleep--I sure
will be thankful to get a room to myself, if I'm not for anything else."

"I don't see how any one can help being crazy over her," continued
Thomas, thumping his pillow as if he would like to pummel any one who
disagreed with him.

"Don't you?" asked Austin.

The next night he was in New York with Mr. Stevens, trying hard to feel
natural in a tiny flat which was only one of fifty in the same great
house. A colored butler served an elaborate dinner at eight o'clock in
the evening, and brought black coffee, liqueurs, and cigars into the
living-room afterwards, and, worst of all, unpacked all his scanty
belongings and laid them about his room. Austin really suffered, and the
cold perspiration ran down his back, but he watched his host carefully
and waited from one moment to another to see what would be expected of
him next; he managed, too, before he went to bed, to ask a question which
had been on his mind for some time.

"Would you mind telling me, sir, where Sylvia's mother is?"

Uncle Mat shot one of his keen little glances in Austin's direction.
"Why, no, not at all, as nearly as I can," he said. "My brother,
Austin, made a most unfortunate match; his wife was a mean, mercenary,
greedy woman, as hard as nails, and as tough as leather--but handsome,
oh, very handsome, as a girl, and clever, I assure you. I have often
been almost glad that my brother did not live long enough to see her in
her real colors. She married, very soon after Sylvia herself, a
worthless Englishman--discharged from the army, I believe, who had
probably been her lover for some time. Cary gave her a check for a
hundred thousand to get rid of her the day after his wedding to Sylvia,
and the pair are probably living in great comfort on that at some
second-rate French resort."

"Thank you for telling me; but it's rather awful, isn't it, that any one
should have to think of her mother as Sylvia must? Why, my mother--" He
stopped, flushing as he thought of how commonplace, how homely and
ordinary, his mother had often seemed to him, how he had brooded over his
father's "unfortunate match." "My mother has worked her fingers to the
bone for all of us, and I believe she'd let herself be chopped in pieces
to help us gladly any day."

"Yes," assented Mr. Stevens, "I know she would. There are--several
different kinds of mothers in the world. It's a thousand pities Sylvia
did not have a fair show at a job of that sort. She would have been one
of the successful kind, I fancy."

"It would seem so," said Austin.

CHAPTER VI

New York City
August 25

DEAR MOTHER AND FATHER:

I'm going to lay in a stock of picture post-cards to send you, for if
things move at the same rate in Europe that they do in New York, I
certainly shan't have time to write many letters. But I'll send a good
long one to-night, anyhow. I always thought I'd like to live in the city,
as you know, but a few days of this has already given me a sort of
breathless feeling that I ought always to be on the move, whether there's
anything special to do or not. The noise never stops for one minute,
night or day, and the streets are perfect miracles of light and dirt and
_hurry_. This whole flat could be put right into our dining-room, and
we'd hardly notice it at that, and _hot!_ Mr. Stevens says in the winter
he nearly freezes to death, but I can't believe it.

All day Friday he kept me tearing from shop to shop, buying more clothes
than I can wear out in a lifetime, I believe, lots of them things I'd
never even seen or heard of before. Some of the suits had to be altered a
little, so in the afternoon we went back to the same places we'd been to
in the morning, and tried the blamed things on again. How women can like
that sort of thing is beyond me--I'd rather dig potatoes all day. By five
o'clock I was so tired that I was ready to lie right down on Fifth
Avenue, and let the passing crowds walk over me, if they liked. But Mr.
Stevens hustled me into a huge hotel called the Waldorf for a hair-cut
and "tea" (which isn't a good square meal, but a little something to
drink along with a piece of bread-and-butter as thick through as
tissue-paper) and then out again to see a few sights before we went home
to dress for "an early dinner" (_seven o'clock!_) and go to the theatre
in the evening. "Dressing" meant struggling into my new dress-suit. I
hoped it wouldn't arrive in time, but Mr. Stevens had had it marked
"rush," and it did. I felt like a fool when I got it on, and a pretty
hot, uncomfortable fool to boot. Mr. Stevens apologized for the show,
saying there was really nothing in town at this time of year, but you can
imagine what it seemed like to me! I'd be almost willing to wear pink
tights--same as a good many of the actresses did!--if it meant having
such a glorious time.

It was almost ten o'clock Saturday morning when I waked up, and of course
I felt like a fool again. But that is getting to be such a habitual state
with me, that I don't need to keep wasting paper by mentioning it. By the
time I was washed and shaved and dressed, Mr. Stevens had been to his
office, transacted all the business necessary for the day, and was ready
to see sights again. "It doesn't take long to do things when you get the
hang of hustling," he said, referring to his own transactions; "come
along. We've got a couple of hours before lunch, and then we'll take the
2.14 train down to my farm." So we shot downstairs about forty flights to
the second in the elevator, hailed a passing taxicab, jumped in, and were
tearing out Riverside Drive--much too fast to see anything--in no time.
We had "lunch" at a big restaurant called Delmonico's, a great deal to
eat and not half enough time to eat it in, then took another taxi and
made our train by catching on to the last car.

I don't need to tell you about the farm, because you know all about that
already. I never left Jenkins's heels one second, and he said I was much
more of a nuisance than Thomas, because Thomas caught on to things
naturally, and I asked questions all the time. I don't believe I'll see
anything in Europe to beat that place. When we get to milking our cows,
and separating our cream, and doing our cleaning by electricity, it'll be
something like, won't it?

We took a seven o'clock train back to New York this morning, so that Mr.
Stevens could get to his office by nine, and he had me go with him and
wait around until he was at leisure again. I certainly thought the
stenographers' fingers would fly off, and all the office boys moved with
a hop, skip, and jump; really, the slowest things in the rooms were the
electric fans whizzing around. By half-past eleven Mr. Stevens had
dictated about two hundred and fifty letters, sold several million
dollars' worth of property (he's a real-estate broker), and was all ready
to go out with me to buy more socks, neckties, handkerchiefs, etc.,
having decided that I didn't have enough. We had "lunch" at
Sherry's--another swell restaurant--and took a trip up the Hudson in the
afternoon, getting back at half-past ten--"Just in time," said Mr.
Stevens, "to look in at a roof-garden before we go to bed." So we
"looked," and it sure was worth a passing glance, and then some. It's one
o'clock in the morning now, and I sail at nine, so I'm writing at this
hour in desperation, or you won't get any letter at all.

Much love to everybody. I picture you all peacefully sleeping--except
Thomas, of course--with no such word as "hurry" in your minds.

AUSTIN

* * * * *

S.S. Amsterdam
September 4

DEAR SALLY:

It doesn't seem possible that I'm going to land to-morrow! The first two
days out were pretty dreadful, and I'll leave them to your
imagination--there certainly wasn't much left of _me_ except
imagination! But by the third day I was beginning to sit up and take
notice again, and by the fourth I was enjoying myself more than I ever
did in all my life before.

There's a fellow on board named Arthur Brown, who has his sister Emily
with him; they're both unmarried, and well over thirty, teachers in a
small Western college, and are starting out on their "Sabbatical year."
Seeing them together has made me think a lot about you, and wish you were
along; they've very little money, and have never been to Europe before,
and almost every night they sit down and figure out how they're going to
get the most out of their trip, trying new plans and itineraries all the
time. They get into such gales of laughter over it that you'd think being
poor was the greatest fun in the world, and the tales they've told about
working their way through high school and college, and saving up to come
to Europe, would be pathetic if they weren't so screamingly funny. I
haven't been gone very long yet, I know, but it's been long enough for me
to decide that Sylvia sent me off, not primarily to buy cows and study
agriculture, but to learn a few things that will be a darned sight better
worth knowing than that even, and--_to have a good time_! In the hope, of
course, that I'll come home, not only less green, but less cussedly
disagreeable.

Mr. Stevens has crossed on this boat twice, and introduced me to both
the captain and the chief engineer before I started; they've both been
awfully kind to me, and I've seen the "inwards and outwards" of the ship
from garret to cellar, so to speak, and learned enough about navigation
and machinery to make me want to learn a lot more. But even without all
this, there would have been plenty to do. This isn't a "fashionable
line," so they say, but it's a good deal more fashionable than anything
we ever saw in Hamstead, Vermont! There's dancing every evening--not a
bit like what we have at home, and it really made me gasp a little at
first--you thought I was hard to shock, too, didn't you? Well, believe
me, I blushed the first time I discovered that I was expected to hold my
partner so tight that you couldn't get a sheet of paper between us.
However, I soon stopped blushing, and bent all my energies to the
agreeable task of learning instead, and the girls are all so friendly
and jolly, that I believe I'm getting the hang of the new ways pretty
well. There are no square dances at all and very few waltzes or
two-steps, but two newer ones, the one-step and fox-trot, hold the
floor, literally and figuratively! I wish I could describe the girls'
dresses to you, they're so, pretty, but I can't a bit, except to say
that they rather startled me at first, too; they appear to be made out
of about one yard of material, and none of that yard goes to sleeves,
and not much to waist. A very lively young lady sits next to me at the
table, and I worried incessantly at first as to what would happen if her
shoulder-straps should break: but apparently they are stronger than they
look. When they--the girls, I mean--feel a little chilly on deck, they
put on scarves of tulle--a gauzy stuff about half as thick as mosquito
netting. I don't quite see why they're not all dead of pneumonia, but
they seem to thrive.

I've also learned--or am trying to learn--to play a game of cards called
"bridge"; it's along the same lines as good old bid-whist, but
considerably dressed up. I like that, too, but feel pretty stupid at it,
as most of the players can remember every two-spot for six hands back,
and hold dreadful post-mortems of their opponents' mistakes at the end of
the game. I've brought along the old French grammar I had in high school,
as well as some new phrase-books that Mr. Stevens gave me, and take them
to bed with me to study every night, for he told me that you could get
along 'most anywhere if you knew French. There's a library aboard, too,
so I've read several novels, and I'm getting used to my clothes--I don't
believe I've got too many after all--and to taking a cold bath every
morning and shaving at least once a day.

Make Fred toe the mark while I'm not there to look after you, but
remember he's a good sort just the same; I was an awful fool ever to
advise you not to stick to him, he's worth a dozen of his cousin. Tell
Molly she'll have to do some practising to come up to the way some of the
girls on this ship play, but I believe she's got more talent than all of
them put together, if she'll only work hard enough to develop it. There's
going to be an _extra_ good time to-night, as it's the last one, and I'm
looking forward to dancing my heels off. Love to you all, especially
mother, and tell her I haven't seen a doughnut since I left home.

Affectionately your brother

AUSTIN

* * * * *

Paris,
October 1

DEAR THOMAS:

I got here last night, and found the cable from father saying that
the cattle and Dutch Peter had reached New York all right, and that
he had met them there. I know you'll like Peter, and I hope we can
keep him indefinitely, though I only hired him to take the cows
over, and stay until those Holstein aristocrats were properly
acclimated to the Homestead. I'm glad they've got there. And, gosh!
I'm glad I've got _here!_ I realize I've been a pretty poor
correspondent, sending just picture post-cards, and now and then a
note to mother, but, you see, I've crowded every minute so darned
full, and then I've never had much practice. So before I start out to
"do" Paris, I'll practice a little on you.

I landed at Rotterdam, had twenty-four hours there with Emily and Arthur
Brown--that brother and sister I met on shipboard--then we separated,
they going to Antwerp, and I heading straight for The Hague to present
Sylvia's letter of introduction to Mr. Little, the American Minister,
shaking in my shoes, and cold perspiration running down my back, of
course. But I needn't "have shook and sweat," as our friend Mrs. Elliott
says, for he was expecting me and was kindness itself. He found an
interpreter to go through the farming district with me, and then he
invited me to come and stay at his house for a few days before I started
for the interior. He has a son about my age, who I imagine has suffered
from the same form of heart disease with which you are afflicted at
present, as he seemed to be somewhat affected every time Sylvia's name
was mentioned; and a daughter Flora, an awfully friendly, jolly,
pink-and-white creature. Fortunately she informed me promptly that she
was engaged to a fellow in Paris, or I might have got heart disease, too.
They kept me on the jump every minute--sight-seeing and parties, and
excursions of all sorts, and one night we went to see a play of
Shakespeare's, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," given in Dutch. (I find
that all Continentals admire him immensely, and give frequent
performances of his works.) Get out our old copy and re-read it some
rainy day; you're probably rusty on it, same as I was, but it's an
interesting tale, and there's a song in it that can't help appealing to
you. Here's the first verse:

"Who is Sylvia? What is she
That all the swains commend her?
Holy, fair, and wise is she,
The heavens such grace did lend her
That she might admired be."

I advise you to invest in doublet, hose, plumed hat, and guitar, and try
the effect of a serenade under our Sylvia's--beg pardon, _your_ Sylvia's
window. The fellow in the play made a great hit, so there's no telling
what you might accomplish.

I hated leaving the Littles', for the good time I had there sure beat the
good time I had on shipboard "to a frazzle"; but I soon found out that
the business part of the trip was going to be a good deal more
interesting and absorbing than I had imagined it would be. My
interpreter, Hans Roorda, a fellow several years younger than I am, can
speak five languages, all equally well, and I kept him busy talking
French to me. We were in the country almost three weeks. The farmers
haven't half the mechanical conveniences that we considered absolutely
necessary even in our least prosperous days, but are marvels of order and
efficiency, for all that. I believe one of the greatest mistakes that we
New England farmers have been making is to assume that farming is a
mixture of three fourths muscle and one fourth brains--I'm beginning to
think it's the other way around. As you have already learned, I followed
Jenkins's advice, bought a dozen head of fine cattle, and hired Peter
Kuyp, the son of one of the farmers I visited, to take care of them. Of
course, this meant going back to Rotterdam to see them safely off, and I
managed to get a glimpse of some of the other Dutch cities as well. When
I got to Amsterdam I parted from Roorda with real regret, for I feel he's
one of the many good friends I've already made. I found my first American
mail in Amsterdam, among other letters one from you. The news from home
in it was all fine. I'm glad father has sold that old Blue Hill pasture.
It was too far off from the rest of our land to be of much real use to
us, and I also think he was dead right to use the money he got from it to
pay off old debts. Mr. Stevens writes me that he has sold Sylvia's Long
Island house for her, and that her horses, carriages, sleighs, and motor
are all going up to the Homestead. Now that the Holsteins are there, too,
why don't you sell the few old cows and the two horses that we rescued
from the fire, and use that money in paying off more debts? If the
mortgage were only out of the way, with all the other improvements you
speak of well started, I should think we were headed straight for
millionaires' row.

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